Politico:

Howard Opinsky, the press secretary for John McCain's campaign in 2000, says he wasn't a source for the Times story and hadn't even heard of Vicki Iseman.

"I never met this woman, I never saw her in my life," Opinsky said.

Opinksy, who contacted Politico unsolicited, said he was "absolutely not" the source of the story.

He said Times reporter Jim Rutenberg contacted him on Dec. 31 and that he only told Rutenberg he didn't know Iseman was.

"He was totally fishing around, trying to bait me into telling him something," Opinsky recalled. "After a while, he threw her name out there. I have had never heard of her in my life. But he was clearly trying to build a case on lobbying influence."

Opinsky also said that the Times use of the phrase "associates" to describe their McCain sources suggests that the leak may not have come from his campaign staffers at the time.

"There was only a handful of us [working on the campaign in 1999]," Opinksy said. "We never had a staff meeting to address any of this."

Asked who was behind the story, Opinsky said: "Lobbyists tell a lot of tall tales.

"What's behind this is money. There were a bunch of lobbyists in town who knew that if John McCain became president they were going to have a hard time."

Opinsky is now an executive at the Washington public relations firm Powell Tate. He supports McCain, but hasn't worked for the candidate this cycle.